Book talk: The Boundless by Kenneth Oppel

Imagine you are going to ride the longest train in the world -- the Boundless: she's seven miles long and holds over six thousand passengers. Think about it: seven miles long. There are entire cities shorter than that! Anyhow, some people claim the Boundless is too big, and there's one creepy fact you should know: she carries her dead founder's coffin in a locked and guarded room. Creepy, huh?

Will is our young hero, and he needs to get into that locked coffin room. His family used to be poor, but thanks to the Boundless and its creator, they are now rich. Life is good.

Did I just say Will's life was good? Strike that. At one point, he got off the Boundless, went into the woods, and barely made it back to the departing train -- he got on the caboose on the very end. So why is that a problem? First of all, the Boundless is seven miles long, and it's not easy to travel between cars. Many of them are locked, and there are different classes of passengers on the train: the rich are at the front, the middle class are somewhere in the middle, and the poor are crammed together in over-crowded cars at the end. Will's dad is at the front, and Will is at the very back.

Will stinks, and there are men on board trying to kill him. He stinks because he doused himself with the urine -- that's pee -- of a supposed sasquatch, a huge, monstrous, ape-like creature. That stuff stinks. The men trying to kill him stink as well, only not literally. What kind of a crazy train is this? Read Kenneth Oppel's The Boundless to find out.

The Boundless by Kenneth Oppel. Simon & Schuster, 2014. Booktalk to grades 5-9.

Book talk: Choker by Elizabeth Woods (Virginia Readers' Choice, 2013-2014)

What would you do if the best friend you ever had – whom you hadn’t seen in years – showed up in your bedroom, sitting on your bed, and asked you if she could stay with you (unbeknownst to any parents) to escape an abusive home situation?

If you were Cara, you’d let her stay. Zoe was Cara’s best friend when they were younger, and now Cara’s a teenager who struggles with the social situation at her high school. Cara doesn’t have any real friends at school, and she just got the nickname “Choker” from an embarrassing incident in which she almost choked to death on a carrot in the school cafeteria. The cool kids witnessed it, and they won’t let Cara forget it.

So Zoe hides out in Cara’s bedroom while Cara’s at school, and Cara’s parents are too busy with their important legal careers even to notice. At first it’s fun – like a slumber party that never ends – but Zoe’s strange and difficult moods – and her disappearances - get harder and harder for Cara to handle. Cara has told Zoe about the mean popular kids and knows that Zoe hates them. Zoe might be strange, but she’s loyal to Cara, and perhaps too loyal.

But something nags at Cara. One of the girls in the popular crowd is found dead and another goes missing. Does Zoe have anything to do with this?

Choker by Elizabeth Woods. 233 pages. Booktalk to high school. Virginia Readers’ Choice, 2013-2014.

Choker

Book talk: Creepy Carrots (Caldecott honor, 2013)

 

[For this booktalk you will need three or four props: one prop must be a real or fake carrot. The others can be scary, Halloween-like things: a scary mask, a picture of a ghost, a little skeleton, a picture of a haunted house, etc.  Don’t show the cover until you’re done with your prop intro.]

I have four items for you to examine today. A picture of a ghost, a little skeleton, a goblin mask, and a carrot. [Let them observe for a few seconds.] Talk to me about this group. Which item does not fit in? The carrot? Why doesn’t the carrot fit in? [Hopefully, one of the kids will say that it isn’t scary but the other items are.] Carrots aren’t scary? Are you serious? Does this mean you’re not afraid of carrots?

[Now you can show the book’s cover.] But what if you were haunted by creepy carrots? You thought they were harmless: you are so, so wrong, and that’s what Jasper Rabbit thought. He loved carrots, and he would just plop himself down in Crackenhopper Field gorging himself on carrots. They were his passion, but he is a rabbit, after all.

One day he was just minding his own business, about to pick some carrots, when all of a sudden, he thought he heard carrots creeping up behind him. He turned around, but there was nothing there.

But that night, in the bathroom mirror, as he was brushing his teeth: THERE THEY WERE!!!!! Creepy carrots out to get him!

Imagine living your life, the life of an innocent carrot-eating rabbit, while knowing that carrots are stalking you, watching you, and breathing their creepy little carroty breath right behind your back.

Creepy Carrots by Aaron Reynolds, illustrated by Peter Brown. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2012. Unpaged. Booktalk to K-2. Caldecott medal honor book, 2013. Great quick read-aloud.

Creepy Carrots!

Book talk: When You Reach Me (Virginia Readers' Choice, 2012-2013)

Raise your hand if you like to write notes. They’re fun, aren’t they? It’s also fun to get notes.

But Miranda has been getting notes from someone who doesn’t sign the notes.  Miranda doesn’t know if the note writer is male or female, young or old. She doesn’t know how the note writer even knows her. You know what’s even stranger? The notes appear in her stuff, and she doesn’t know how the notes got there. How do you get a note into a locked house?

So Miranda has a predicament. Fortunately, she’s pretty tough: she’s in sixth grade, and she walks around New York City by herself. She’s got street smarts, too. She knows how to behave around the homeless man on the corner and the boys who beat up her best friend, Sal. Oh wait, Sal doesn’t want to hang out with Miranda any more. Cross him off the best friend list.

Let’s go back to these mysterious notes. Why can’t Miranda just ignore them? It’s probably just some stupid prank, right? But what if the notes had a ring of truth to them? What if something in the notes even predicted future events using specific details?

Why are these notes so important, and who is writing them? When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead.

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. 199 p. Yearling, 2009. Newbery Medal, 2010. Virginia Readers’ Choice (middle school), 2012-2013.

When You Reach Me